Johnny Rotten, former lead singer of the legendary punk band the Sex Pistols, had an interesting quote in a recent interview he did with Spinner magazine:
"It's (music and songwriting) all been trivialized in a Britney Spears-y kind of way, hasn't it? They've taken it and killed off the energy and co-opted us into this commercialism that's really, really dull. Britney Spears is Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart's all right for T-shirts and socks, that's about what she is. The industry for a long time now, going back for 20 years solidly, has not backed songwriting from the youth point of view. It's actually killed youth culture and rebellion and repackaged and remodeled it into very, very dreary things. There's powerful stuff in rap music, but honestly, 98 percent of it is mindless and repetitive and tedious. Now, I worked with Afrika Bambaataa some 20-plus years ago, and what's changed since then? What's as good as 'The Message'? Nothing comes to mind. Most of it is utterly selfish and it's all about acquiring goods and bragging about how much jewelry you can wear at once. If that's what the white man has taught the black man, that selfishness is the root to all success, they're wrong."
Personally, I don't see why he's bringing Britney Spears into it (probably because she's the only pop star of the last ten years or so that the older generation can actually name off the top of their head), as I said in my last post, I feel that the music of the 90's, even the late 90's, had a little more direction than the music of today. However, I agree that the problem is mainly commercialism and greed. Corporate America seems to be going for the cheap and easy sell not only in the music industry, but nearly every where else as well. So how do we get out of this rut? I will try to give some opinions on this in my upcoming posts...
